Top Financial Advisors Make Time For Themself
Yes, we started off with this. Our conversations and studies of the top financial advisors in the country all have this in common. Focusing on yourself to better serve your prospects and clients will help you maintain control of emotions and external events.
There are months and stretches where you will close personal records of business. Other months you might question whether this profession is for you or not.
The most important element to balancing and smoothing out those tough months is to focus on yourself and well being.
Get your nutrition right
Its everywhere in this industry, wholesaler lunches, dinners, happy hours, client events, drinks here, drinks there. 15-20 pounds later, you are now aiming to reverse these costly habits. The hardest part about this is its so common in this industry.
Track your nutrition with an app. It’s easy and you will think twice about eating what is offered during the wholesaler lunch or going out for drinks with them.
This is critical to your success but is the hardest to do and is a common trait amongst the top financial advisors.
How do financial advisors get their first clients?
Being younger doesn’t mean you know less even though you may think yourself as such. We were all there once upon a time and still may have those thoughts.
Focus on prospects that you don’t have to qualify because you know at least they are in a profession or situation that would make them good clients.
This doesn’t mean spending hours on end researching prospects on a list, but knowing what will gauge their interest. Keeping this strategy consistent will yield the best results and open the most doors to opportunity.
Top Financial Advisors leverage internal experts
This is the most efficient way to rake in those new clients. Consider spending a few days to a week to knowing who your internal or external experts are.
For example this can range from:
- Alternative Investment Team
- Commercial Lending
- Asset based lending
- Prime brokerage
- Hedge Fund Services
- Stock Option management
You do not need to become an expert at these, just enough to speak high level and be able to identify the opportunity. Ultimately, you will use this knowledge, combine it with a lead platform and be able to strike up some very insightful conversations.
Automate your pipeline
This is the most time consuming, monotonous but necessary part of your business. The top Financial Advisors know this and have junior associates that help. Here are some of the issues that you may face when looking externally to generate leads.
- You are at a large firm and limited to the social advertising you can perform
- Navigating around various FINRA and SEC laws can be a challenge
- Unsure how to target your ads, copy, and market focus
This industry is still heavily outbound. For those that sit and wait for inbound calls should not be shocked when they realize it doesn’t exist.
Even companies that claim to “sell verified leads to limited amount of advisors” are met with heavily negative reviews from the financial advisors that use it.
Automation Means
- You have identified a market you want to pursue
- There is enough information about them to know they are good prospects
- It provides you relative information for you to use to prospect
- You can easily place these prospects into a sales process that leads to good closure rates
- This process is easily repeatable and can be done daily
Spend the time to get this squared away, no matter what market you are pursuing. You will find yourself in a much happier place mentally and professionally.
Set expectations early on
95% of issues with clients can be avoided and will stem from a miscommunication. The Top Financial Advisors ensure that their clients know exactly what they are getting when doing business with them. When you are coming up with proposals to clients, add a section where you talk about expectations that include some of the following
- What we do during market swings and downturns
- On-going review process and meeting frequency
- What you do and don’t do
- What type of behavior or client response is unacceptable
- Support outlets in the even you are unavailable
Having these present during your annual reviews will keep the relationship strong and will prevent marks on your U-4.
Delegate tasks when possible
If you are just starting out, this may not be in your budget but you can still use this to your advantage. Document the processes you have with tasks that are repetitive, not revenue producing or that you just don’t want to do. Keep these in a folder for when you have the ability to bring someone or have an assistant to help accomplish these tasks.
If you are growing or more established, separate tasks into $1,000/hr and $50 an hour tasks (or whatever your going rate is).
Ask yourself if the task at hand is $1,000/hr work or $50/hr work.
If its the former, you do it. If its the later, outsource or delegate it. The top Financial Advisors delegate most of their day which leaves them available for opportunity.